Product Description

A step-by-step guide to explain the process of creating an underlying structure for a web site.  Topics covered include: Setting and achieving website goals; translating the site's goals into meaningful content; organizing the content so that visitors can find what they're looking for.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #572343 in Books
• Published on: 2000-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From the Author
On-line success doesn't happen by accident!

I wrote this book for people who have a direct influence on the content and structure of a website - sites created for their personal use, for their employer, or for a client organization. Although the market abounds with books on HTML programming and graphic design, very little exists to tell people how to create a "flow chart" for their website - one that helps define and arrange the site's content so visitors can quickly and easily find what they're looking for. Although this isn't a particularly glamorous subject, information architecture is often the single most important step in the creation of a successful website.

As far as possible, I've tried to put together a nuts-and-bolts, hands-on guide to the subject. I've been using and refining the techniques I describe since the late 70s and have been involved in the creation of interactive media on a daily basis since the late 80s - from primitive menu-based DOS applications to the latest in glitzy e commerce sites.

It may come as a surprise, but the problems I've faced over the years have not changed very much, even though the individual programs and interfaces have. That's because the issues of information architecture are generic in nature and are thus largely unrelated to technological advances. A simple analogy: safer cars may keep us from getting killed on the highway, but they don't make us better drivers.

I'm not a theoretician. I'm not a programmer. I'm not a hot-shot designer. Rather, I'm a content provider who, like those I'm addressing, has to solve here-and-now problems that are directly related to the usability and ultimate acceptance/success of a website. This book explains how I think and how I work - my tricks of the trade.

Customer Reviews

not enough depth here - merely confirmed what I already knew
It seems books on this topic are very thin on the ground, and good books even more scarce! I was looking for some meat on the hows and whys of whether to use frames, navigation links, how to "regionalise" a web site - where to put banner ads and how to start incorporating dynamic components into my static pages. None of this did I find. The book only served as a quick read to confirm what I already knew from several years of surfing, creating less an less amatuerish websites and the odd intranet site. The good points of the book are its attention to the procedure of getting teams onside to actually create the site from a concept plan through to finished article, complete with testing, revision and restructuring - and the various pitfalls to watch out for. Formalising the distinction between the oddly name functional and topical sites, cemented a design choice I am currently making. Various other design blunders are mentioned and compared, but no solution is really presented. Overall, worth a quick read, but not the design bible I was hoping for.

The most useful handbook I�ve purchased all year!
Along with Don't Make Me Think, this book ought to be required reading by anyone working with interactive media. Mr. Reiss' clear explanations of complicated problems combined with good illustrations (sadly not in colour) make this the most useful handbook I've purchased all year. I was also pleased to see that the author lives on our side of the Atlantic, which provides a more well-rounded perspective than most other web publications. Quite frankly, don't design another site before you have read your Reiss!

Lots of Info - but a big disappointment
Eric Reiss is clearly very knowledgable and experienced and this book contains many pearls of wisdom that should be of interest to those involved in designing the structure of websites - especially if they are not very experienced in the subject and want some background on the various issues to be taken into account.

Unfortunately, for a book on Information Architecture, the content is not very well structured, some parts are not of great interest, and large parts are not really about Information Architecture. Sometimes the pearls of wisdom were hidden in some fairly boring digressions.
With brutal editing, some new content and a change in title, this could be a very good book. Few books are written on this subject so it is still worth a read, but I was disappointed.